Charles Isherwood visits the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s newly-opened Harman Hall and is bemused by the tagging of every possible amenity in the place with the name of a corporate benefactor. For pity’s sake, the elevators and the coat check room have an underwriter.
Whatever happened to Anonymous?
…what became of those wealthy philanthropists who used to support arts organizations and other not-for-profit and charitable institutions without requiring that their names be slapped somewhere — anywhere, it sometimes seems — on a building?
He then turns to a favorable development at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A group of anonymous donors contributed $85 million so that the business school would not bear a brand name. At least for the next 20 years.
Meanwhile, since I was graduated in 1977, my alma mater has sold the naming rights to its liberal arts, engineering, medical, and business schools like a cash-strapped city scrounging for ways to pay for its new baseball stadium.